Monday, July 13, 2009

Anne and Connie, with duelling bad hair

11 comments:

DreadedCandiru2 said...

Well, it's only fair that they pick Elly apart when she's not in the room; not that Flapandhonk would see it that way. If she realized they did the same thing to her she does to them, she'd unhinge her jaw and start yelling.

April Patterson said...

Elly would blow a gasket. ;)

howard said...

I love Anne's eye roll. The explanation about the nursing fits in great, thanks to our historic perspective on nursing from Deanna.

April Patterson said...

Thanks, howtheduck. One of the things that irritates me about Lynn is the narrowness of her perspective. Not only does she take it for granted that Elly would do things as she did, but naturally, Dee would as well.

I remember being very proud of Dee when she countered Mira's bad advice regarding formula and baby bedding, telling Mira that she wasn't following all the latest "rules," but rather all the latest research.* But if Lynn herself could have been arsed to dig into that research even a little, she'd realize that Dee would have seen that Health Canada, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends breastfeeding for at least a year. But no, since Lynn herself was a wean-at-six-months mom, Dee did so, too, without a thought (although this was only spelled out in the letters--in the strip the closest thing was to show Meredith biting, and I guess the reader was supposed to "read between the lines" to conclude that weaning to formula was imminent). Mira was evil for suggesting a switch to formula before six months, but after six months, it was suddenly no big.

(And I don't mean to condemn mothers who choose otherwise--but it seemed to me that Dee, as presented, would have gone at least a year.)

*Of course, the only reason Lynn even knew about the "latest research" re. putting babies to bed on their backs was because she screwed up on this and people wrote in. Originally, she claimed that Meredith was put to bed on her side (when clearly she was on her stomach), presumably because she half-remembered that this was still among the recommendations when April was born in the strip. But by the time Meredith came along, it was "back to sleep."

Holly said...

My midwife explained that the World Health Org guidelines on breastfeeding settled upon six months not because some miraculous change comes over a baby's digestive system on its 181st day, but because mothers in the poorest countries might not have access to clean drinking water with which to make formula and this amount of time at least gave the baby a fighting chance. It was also more likely that a mother who had nursed for six months would be able to continue, allowing a better redistribution of often-limited resources such as purified water and formula to be directed to those infants who really needed it, like those whose mothers were too malnourished to nurse or whose mothers died in childbirth.

April Patterson said...

Something that does occur at about six months is the infant's gut matures--an immature or "leaky" gut is the reason six months is recommendated as the age for introducing complementary foods.

And here is something from the WHO's "Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding" that would probably make Lynn's head explode:

As a global public health recommendation, infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life to achieve optimal growth, development and health. There-after, to meet their evolving nutritional requirements, infants should receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods while breastfeeding continues for up to two years of age or beyond.

Two years or beyond, Lynn--and no, this doesn't mean toddlers lifting mothers' shirts while mothers are having lattes at the mall, dimwit. Shockingly:

(a) toddlers do not nurse with the frequency of newborns;

(b) toddlers can learn nursing manners, such as asking (and accepting "no" for an answer) and even not nursing away from home

[Lynn chafed my butt with something stupid she wrote on this subject in Suddenly Silver; sorry about the dead-horse beating. ;)]

April Patterson said...

[...Or it might have been Lives Behind the Lines; she certainly wrote stupid things in both!]

Anonymous said...

Lynn is an idiot.

Both my kids breastfed until age 2.5 when they apparently got too bored with it, and at that point it had dwindled to it being not even every day, only for comfort at bedtime, and for about 10 seconds or so.

April Patterson said...

Anonymous, it was the same way with my son when he self-weaned when he was just shy of 3.5 years old. He was down to just his bedtime session and had started skipping a day here and there. Then he just stopped.

ITA about the idiocy of Lynn.

Anonymous said...

I really love your take on the Foobs. This strip and Foob's Paradise have become my must-reads.

And thanks for picking up on Lynn's breastfeeding issues! It drove me batty too. I'm still feeding with a nearly-2 year old- teeth aren't an issue, and it's NOT UNNATURAL.

sorry, preaching to the choir. Anyway, please keep going!

April Patterson said...

And thanks for picking up on Lynn's breastfeeding issues! It drove me batty too. I'm still feeding with a nearly-2 year old- teeth aren't an issue, and it's NOT UNNATURAL.

Seriously. What's aggravating is that Lynn doesn't just not know. She doesn't know that she doesn't know. At least if she were aware of her gaps, she might be inspired do something to remedy them. But if she doesn't know yet believes she does, it doesn't occur to her to fact-check. (Though given her aversion to research, maybe I'm being too generous.) I kind of suspect that the same kind of thing led to Lynn's whole "I was switching birth control pills" story with Deanna. A pharmacist would know better, but did Lynn?

sorry, preaching to the choir. Anyway, please keep going!

Hey, it's nice to meet a kindred spirit. :)